Patna: The land acquisition work for the Patna-Purnia Expressway will be completed within 100 days. This information was given by the District Magistrates of Vaishali, Samastipur, Darbhanga, Saharsa, Madhepura, and Purnia during a meeting with Bihar Chief Secretary Amrit Lal Meena. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) will also issue the tender for this project within the same period. The meeting was held on Wednesday to review various highway projects going on in Bihar.
The Patna-Purnia Expressway will be six lanes wide. It will start from Sarai in Vaishali district and include the northern part of Patna’s Ring Road. Efforts are being made to connect it to Sherpur-Dighwara as well. In Purnia, it will end at Vishwaspur on NH 27. The plan is also to connect this expressway with the Purvanchal Expressway so that people can travel easily from Purnia to Delhi via Gorakhpur.
In the meeting, it was told that financial approval for this project will be received within this month. NHAI has also agreed to extend the expressway up to Dighwara by building a bridge on the Gandak river. The Chief Secretary said land acquisition for other projects like Raxaul-Haldia and Siliguri-Gorakhpur highways will also start soon, as their alignments have been approved.
Apart from this, the tender process for building a new bridge on the Ganga river from Vikramshila to Katariya has been completed, and its foundation stone will be laid soon. Since 2015, NHAI has approved 68 projects in Bihar, out of which 21 are complete, 47 are ongoing, and 21 new ones are being planned. The total cost of these projects is Rs 2.20 lakh crore, and Rs 38,000 crore has already been spent.
